XI
COUNTER ATTRACTIONS
Half the time I don't trouble to look up at them, especially when I happen to be busy. They put their money underneath the brass wire; they ask for what they want; it's given to them, and off they go. If any other plan was adopted we should never get through the work at our office, and there would be complaints to answer, and the superintendent might send some one along to kick up a row. As Miss Maitland says, when all the customers are made on one pattern everything will be much easier to manage; meanwhile we can't do better than to do the best we can, and to recognise that some are in a hurry, some are just the reverse.
“Above all,” mentioned Miss Maitland, when I first came here, “no carrying on across the counter with young gentlemen.”
“When you've known me longer, Miss Maitland,” I said, “you'll see how unnecessary it is to make a remark like that.”
“I'm only warning you for your own good.”
“I can behave myself,” I said, “as well as most girls. The fact that I'm a bit above the average in regard to looks”
“Is that really a fact?” inquired Miss Maitland.
The very queer thing about it all was that he came in on the afternoon of the very second day I was there. I was having an argument about a halfpenny with a lady sending a telegram, and she said that she always understood we were well paid, and if that was true we ought not to try to make anything extra. I kept my temper, but I daresay I managed to say what I wanted to say—I generally do—and eventually she took the telegram back and decided to take a cab to Charing Cross and send it from there.
“Shilling'sworth of your best stamps,” he requested; “I want them to match my necktie.”
“Pennies or halfpennies?” I asked. You can understand I wasn't in the mood for nonsense just then.
“Which are most fashionable just now, miss? I don't want to look odd or conspicuous.”
“You'll do that in any case. Kindly say what you want.”
“Perhaps I'll try sixpennyworth of each,” he said.
I tore them off and pushed them underneath the trellis.
“Are these absolutely fresh? I may not be cooking them at once, you see. They'll be all right, I suppose, if I keep them on ice?”
“You may as well put your head there at the same time,” I said.
The other girls on my side of the counter looked around, and Miss Maitland gave a cough.
“Heavens!” he said, putting on a deep voice, “how I adore the fair creature! Ere yonder sun sinks to its rest she must, she shall, be mine.”
I glanced up at him, prepared to give him such a haughty look, but I found he was a good-tempered-looking young fellow with his straw hat tipped to the back of his head, and somehow I couldn't manage my cold stare quite so well as usual. Two or three people entered through the swing doors at that moment and came straight to my part of the counter.
“Very well then,” he said loudly, “that's arranged. Outside the British Museum Tube Station half-past eight to-night. Mind, I shan't wait more than ten minutes.”
The fuss Miss Maitland made just because I'd answered him back! I had a good mind to say something about old maids, but I stopped it just in time; instead I thought it the best plan to say he was a great friend of my brother's and that he was one of those peculiar young gentlemen who had the impression that he ought to keep up his reputation for being comic.
“If he comes in again,” said Miss Maitland, “call me, and I'll show you how to deal with him.”
The next day at about the same time I noticed out of the corner of my eye his lordship at the doors. He came in and I knew he was looking for me; to please Miss Maitland I went along to deal with some registered letters; she left her stool and took my place. “Now,” I said to myself, “now he'll get his head bitten off.” I was engaged with work for about five minutes, and to my surprise, when I had finished, there was Miss Maitland chatting away with him as amiably as possible. “I like to go somewhere fresh every year,” she was saying. “That's why I went to Windermere last summer.” He said, “Not in July by any chance?” and she said, “Yes, the middle of July.” It appeared he had been there at that date; not exactly Windermere but at Bowness, and he remarked—talking to her in a very different way from the one he had adopted with me—that it would have greatly improved his holiday if he had been so fortunate as to meet her. Maity gave a sort of smile and was about to make some further remark when he took out his watch, lifted his straw hat, hurried away.
“Really,” she said to me, still flushed with the conversation and looking quite young, “really a very well-spoken gentleman. Depends a good deal on how we approach them. If they think we want silly talk, why naturally enough they give it. In a general way,” concluded Maity, as though she possessed a wide and considerable experience, “in a general way men treat us as we deserve to be treated.”
He came in again that afternoon to use the telephone; the box was occupied and he had to wait. We were all watching to see how he would behave this time; lo and behold if he didn't take a big book from underneath his arm called The Horse and his Health and read carefully, taking no notice of any of us. Maity looked disappointed, and one of the girls said the great drawback about men was that they were never twice alike.
That was the evening I found him waiting outside. It always rains when I leave my umbrella at home, and I couldn't very well refuse his offer to see me into the motor omnibus, and it was certainly kind of him to suggest that I should take his gamp. I told him that the bus took me within a minute and a half of mother's house.
At the time I was in the habit of telling mother everything, and she decided—not often she praised me—that I had behaved in a ladylike manner, and mentioned it would be a good thing if every mother brought up children as she had treated me. Mother told me about one or two half-engagements that occurred before she married poor father, and gave me one piece of advice which she said was worth its weight in gold, namely, that the moment you saw a young man getting fond of you the best plan was to pretend to be indifferent and in this way to make him see that there was a lot of hard work in front of him. Mother said this three times to impress it on my memory.
How in the world he found out the name it was not easy to see, but, as every one is aware, people spare themselves no trouble when they become fond of anybody. However that may be, the fact remains that a letter came, signed W. J. C., saying the writer would be at the statue on a certain day and at a certain hour, and, just for fun, I kept the appointment. Maity was very nice about giving me leave, and I waited there ten minutes. For a full ten minutes nothing happened, and I had to look at the omnibuses as they stopped in order to pretend I wanted to catch one of them. Presently I caught sight of him looking in a newspaper shop, and taking his time over it too. I became so mad that if there had been a pebble about I think I should have picked it up and thrown it at him. He turned, and I had to wave my muff in order to gain his attention.
“Hullo,” he said, coming across. “Taking up express messenger-boy work? Where's your parcel?”
“I came here,” I said coldly, “because I was asked to do so, and for no other reason. I've no desire to be made to look like an idiot.”
“Plenty of easier tasks than that,” he mentioned. “I should reckon you were one of the most sensible girls going.”
“People say that about a lady when they can't think of any other compliment to pay her.”
“Are you waiting for anybody, I wonder?”
“I wish you wouldn't try to make jokes.”
“My dear girl,” he cried, and he seemed greatly concerned, “please forgive me. And now that we're here, what shall we do?” He looked around, glanced at his watch, and sighed. “Come along and see a bioscope show.”
We caught a bus and went to one of the swell places in Oxford Street; I couldn't help feeling pleased when I noticed that he paid eighteenpence each for seats. You can say what you like, and you can talk about the joys of being independent, but there's something very gratifying in discovering for the first time that a gentleman is willing to take your ticket for you. Of course the place was all darkened whilst the pictures were going on, and I thought perhaps he would try to take my hand, and I was prepared to give him a pretty sharp remark if he did; but nothing happened, and I couldn't make it out at all. It was nothing like what I'd read in books; nothing like what other girls had told me.
“You seem a very comfortable set in your office,” he said when the lights went up. “All on good terms with each other, aren't you?”
“I suppose so,” I answered. “It's my first experience, you see. What age do you think I am?”
“I should say that you are young enough to be pleased if I guessed you to be older than you really are. Shall we say nineteen?”
“Eighteen next birthday, and that's on Tuesday of next week.” (There's nothing like giving a hint.)
“What have you been doing all these eighteen years?”
“Improving myself,” I said.
“You can give that up now you are perfect.”
The lights went down again, and there was set of pictures about a girl who was being loved by two gentlemen—one rather plain with plenty of money and the other much better-looking but apparently only a clerk. I thought over his last remark and tried to discover whether he was still joking or whether he really meant it—if he did mean it it was a very gratifying thing to be said, especially in view of the fact that mother is generally finding fault with me. She has often said that I'm the worst girl in the world for leaving my shoes about and not putting a book away when I have done with it, and all this going on day after day, week after week, had given me a kind of a lurking suspicion that I wasn't quite up to the mark. When the pictures showed that the plain man's money really belonged to the good-looking chap he began to talk again and went back once more to the subject of the post office. I would rather he had spoken of something else; I wanted to forget Maity and the rest of them for awhile.
“Are many of them engaged?” he asked.
“Two of them say they are,” I replied. “I should feel inclined to guess it was only a half-and-half affair in either case.”
“Wonder what their names are?” I told him and he seemed relieved. “It's very strange,” he went on, speaking in a more serious way than usual, “how these affairs happen. Looks as though some one who exercises control jumbles all the names into two hats and picks out one from each at random and decides that they shall meet each other and fall in love.”
“A good deal of it is mere luck,” I agreed. “Mother met father at a dance at the Athenæum up at the end of Camden Road. Of course a steward introduced them, but to all intents and purposes they were strangers.”
“A man goes on,” he said, still thoughtfully, “fighting pretty hard and not giving much attention to the other sex and all at once he catches sight of a face, through, say, brass trelliswork, and instantly he decides 'That's the girl for me.' And he thinks of nothing else, can't keep away from the neighbourhood of her, and” He put his hands over his eyes and bent down.
I felt sorry and I felt pleased if you understand that; sorry for him, pleased for myself—seemed as though I had done him an injustice. It showed that you could not reckon any one up correctly by their outside manner. At the first I had no idea he was anything but the ordinary chaffing sort of young gentleman, and here he was obviously upset. All very well for mother to say that you ought to keep them at arm's length when they are fond of you, but I simply couldn't help patting his sleeve gently.
“Thanks very much,” he said gratefully. “You're a good little girl and I'm really obliged to you.”
There was a funny set after this, with a short-sighted old gentleman blundering over everything he did, getting mixed up with motor cars, carried up by a balloon, tumbling down the funnel of a ship, and finally being rolled out flat by a steam roller, and pulling himself together and walking off.
“Always feel sorry for people who have to wear glasses,” I remarked.
“It improves some people.”
“I don't agree with you. See how peculiar our old joker looks at the office.”
He stared at me.
“Surely you don't mean that Miss Maitland?” he said.
“Of course I mean that Miss Maitland. Who else should I be referring to?”
He pressed the palm of a hand against his forehead.
“Let us get this straight,” he urged. “We seem to be in a muddle. Your name is Maitland, isn't it?”
“My name is Barnes. Up to the present.”
“Then that confounded new messenger boy took my shilling and mixed up the information, and”—he stopped and fanned himself—“and you received the letter I intended for her.”
“I wish to goodness,” I said forcibly, “that some of you men had got a little more common sense.”
•••••
Mother says everything in this world happens for the best, and in all probability there's some one else waiting for me somewhere. Mother says I have plenty of time in front of me; mother herself was twenty-eight before she married. Mother says there is no need for me to feel nervous until I get past that age.